As we walked down, I immediately took in the environment and began planning out battle strategies. It was the arena with the most blocks raised around it, something that could help me with her fast rushes. Some of the geometric shapes raised about mimicked small buildings, cars, or even things that might be like playground equipment.

  Both of us reached the bottom, and I was about to walk past Alex to my side of the arena when I saw the young girl had some doubt in her eyes; something was off. Normally, I'd count my blessings for her being in the wrong headspace, an easy win. But it almost feels wrong not to help someone as innocent as her. Plus, Gunther doesn't like her, so anything to screw with him is a win in my books. Stopping, I asked bluntly, “What’s up?”

  “What? Uh, I mean, what makes you think anything is up?” Alex was trying to smile, but I wasn’t convinced.

  “You were so excited before, you seem down now,” I pressed.

  “Well, I- Ok, one of the teachers gave me a talking to about how badly I had been hurting the other opponents. I didn’t mean to, really. I was even hold-” Gunther interrupted her.

  “If you two are done chit-chatting, then maybe you could get on with the bout,” he said dismissively. I exhaled carefully, not trusting myself not to glare murderously at the man if I lifted my eyes up to meet his.

  I continued walking to my side, walking around the obstacles but gave some parting words to Alex. “Don’t worry about it; I can heal. Plus, I’m not sure if you’ve seen my fights, but I’m pretty darn tough.”

  I really should be trying to improve my own odds rather than help a competitor. I ruminated on that, trying to think of a good reason for my actions. I could and do care, but I suppose it doesn’t matter if I’m lowering my chances of winning. I’m just pushing myself to be a better hero by challenging myself more, and how a high-power battle between the two of us would force even Gunther to eat any words he had about women being weaker. And forcing him to eat his own words really is the most important part I rationalized to myself.

  That and turning around at my end of the arena to see Alex's bright eyes and Gunther's dour face dispelled any remaining doubts and had me smirking widely.

  “Now that you’re ready... Alexandra Herron versus Camila Einsburgh, begin!” Gunther called out, and the two of us were moving as soon as he finished saying ‘begin.’.

  Alex rushed forward, seeing the gap between the obstacles I was facing her from. For my part, I darted to the side, keeping one leg out and extended to unnatural lengths as she did so.

  Alex’s speed worked against her, tripping over my leg and spiraling into a barrier before she would have hit the wall. Unfortunately, the force was greater than I anticipated, and it ended up breaking my leg.

  Biting back a cry of pain and a few tears, I healed my leg, drawing it back to her while dulling my pain receptors. Much like my hearing, it’s not a smart idea to mess with it this much all the time, but I get the feeling it would be far more detrimental to be distracted for a second in this fight.

  The time it took to fix my leg let the winged girl pick herself up from where she had crashed. Alex ran in, far slower but more controlled this time. Her punches were still pretty sloppy, ill-formed haymakers and the like, her strength and speed obviously having compensated for the form in the past. The speed was the most surprising part. Alexandra could obviously charge fast, but her punches were also too fast for most people to dodge. I, however, was not most people.

  Picking apart the blows, I parried everything sent my way easily. I palmed punches to the side, breezing past my head and following it up with a punch to Alex’s kidney. Ducked a kick and threw a straight at her chin. Circled both her arms up to deflect both of Alex’s arms and then punched into the winged girl’s head and solar plexus at the same time... All to no avail. Alex was so tough that it felt like I was punching a steel wall.

  That’s why she strikes so fast - she’s so tough she’s never had to learn to dodge or even tense up to absorb a blow, just able to tank it all. She can focus everything on striking without fear of reprisal. Let’s see if I can change that.

  The two of us danced around the quadrant, a pace quickly set between us with Alex chasing but not hitting, and I lashed out while retreating. Alex tried to hold her arm firm against being parried to the side as she punched once she realized what I was doing, but I simply used the limb to push myself out of the way, rolling over it and throwing myself into a kick into Alex’s jaw. The blow sent reverberations jarring through my leg as Alex hadn’t had time to turn with the blow in the slightest. Too tough for even that.

  Caught off guard for a moment, Alex seized her chance, grabbing me out of the air by my leg, spinning me in a half circle, and tossing me across the room, over the barricades, and slamming me into the wall.

  I coughed harshly as I impacted the wall but didn’t have time to move away before the angel-like girl descended upon me. Alex had used the obstacles to her advantage, in a surprising move, jumping backwards to a taller barrier, then using that vantage point to burst off, flying at me like a rocket.

  I didn’t have time to move out of the way, but I did quickly raise my arms up together and start expanding the bones outward as a makeshift shield to meet Alex’s fist. A shockwave erupted out from the point of contact between the two, the wind whipping up the hair of our classmates above us. I barely noticed that, rather distracted by much of my bones cracking and shattering from the force of the blow, driving me further back against the wall. Lances of pain ripped through me, even past what I had dulled. No time to focus on that either as Alex rose from where she landed after the punch, cornering me and falling upon me in a whirlwind of violence.

  Alex sent a flurry of lightning-fast blows into my body, hammering into my arms and sides. The line between the two was getting blurred as I continually shifted to recover from the broken bones and battered insides. Even with my enhanced durability and healing, I was taking some serious damage. Possibly even more worrying was the feeling of the metal wall starting to bend and crumple around me as I was getting beat through it, deforming it faster than it could fix itself.

  In desperation, I let a fraction of my focus slip from healing myself to extend a noodle-like arm out from behind Alex, one finger on it forming a bone claw. I stabbed at the back of Alex, the razor-sharp claw striking at her spine.

  Alex let her up from her punishing assault to turn around and see who was tapping her back, more confused than anything until she saw the arm. Maybe it didn’t serve as the ‘devastating sneak attack’ that I had intended, but I’ll take it. My legs, most of my arms, and part of my torso too, coiled into biological springs that exploded forth, nailing Alexandra head-on as she turned around to me again, blasting her out from the wall and across the arena.

  The force of the blow had Alex’s wing catch my extendable arm and rip it off as she went soaring across the room, hitting the obstacles so fast she outright shattered, not deformed them. The feathery girl tumbled across the floor and slumped down after hitting one of the larger obstacles, her momentum bled out.

  I hope I didn’t hit her too hard, but Alex seemed quite tough, and the school had a good healer with Ms. Fontaine. The wall started creeping forward as I caught my breath, beginning to reform over me. Right, I have to focus on getting myself out of the hole in the wall (very uncomfortable, but it had helped support me for that kick, which I couldn’t otherwise have done) and reconstituting myself. That kick was strong, nearly as strong as I could get, but it used up way too much energy to be sustainable even disregarding the lack of locomotion it had, so I have to fix my organs and the like pronto.

  I had just finished making myself back to normal and standing on the ground again outside the wall when I heard Alex start to slowly rise.

  “Wow,” the girl moaned out, spitting up a bit of blood from her mouth. “So that’s what pain really feels like.” She rubbed her sternum a bit while flexing out her wings.

  She’s never been hurt before? This... might be harder than I thought.

  “Whoa, are you alright?” Alex asked worriedly instead of leaping on me and pressing her advantage, as she pointed at the forgotten stump of mine, still trickling out blood.

  “Oh, uh, don’t worry about that; it’s really nothing,” I said. The care and concern... so different from her vicious assault a moment ago. I retracted the arm, pulling the mass back into my core and taking the impromptu break Alex’s worry provided to make a few other changes in preparation and step away from the wall, closer to the center of the arena where Alex (and the barriers) were.

  “I mean, I guess if you’re sure,” Alexandra said, looking conflicted.

  “That little amount of blood loss isn’t a big deal for me, given my powers. But I hope you’re ready for me to start really fighting now.” Despite my bravado, I knew I couldn’t win here. Not without going completely all-out, and that just isn’t an option with this many witnesses about. Nor do I need to; it’s just a test, no need to kill her or anything. Still, I could show off a few powerful tricks and at least put up a good fight, enough to impress all of my teachers (save Gunther) and peers.

  “All right then, I’ll give it my all too!” Alex said, grinning broadly as she raced ahead. I was prepared this time, slipping around the obstacles and barriers of the arena to keep ahead of the girl. I had extended my arms a bit and made my feet slippery to slide around the battlefield quickly, darting around every which way. Alex rushed ahead as fast as she could, but her speed couldn’t avail her in a battle of maneuverability.

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  As they raced around the battlefield, sounds of cheering filled my ears, many students watching our duel, along with most of the teachers. Null’s eyes, always on me, always searching for a chance to- Enough of that. Focus.

  Frustrated, Alex let out a disgruntled noise before perking up and jumping onto the largest obstacle on the field again. A rookie mistake, which I supposed befit her experience. The actual teenager in the fight didn’t have decades worth of battle experience to plan out many moves ahead. To even know she was facing someone experienced enough to have come up with a counter to her move after seeing it once.

  When Alex leapt at me again, she found herself flying headlong into green gobs of acid I spat out. She crossed her arms in front of her face to avoid getting hit there, but the acid quickly ate through the sleeves of her uniform and then started sizzling against her flesh.

  “Ach!” Alex cried out, shaking the acid off. “This is so gross! And kinda weird, like I wanna scratch it. Is this what a bug bite feels like? Nasty.” I hadn’t intended for the acid to really eat away at Alex’s enhanced skin like it would through most people’s (as well as through their muscle and bone), but it still hammers home how tough my foe is. There was also the chance that acid, or even just non-kinetic attacks, would be her weakness, but no luck there; she’s the complete package. It had at least distracted Alex, not that I needed it with my extra arms shifted out, allowing me to quickly change my direction and speed as I zipped around the arena.

  I spat out more acid at Alex as I continued my evasion across the arena, my body becoming less and less humanoid as I made more mouths extending out of my body on flexible necks to fling out more of the acid, making a downpour of it across the battlefield. Alex was dodging almost as much as I was now as the feathery girl tried and failed to close the distance between us.

  If it was anyone else, that strategy would have doomed them, bits of acid eating away at them, burning and stinging until they made a big mistake, but Alexandra wasn’t slowing down. I wasn’t either, but that’s because I knew what would happen when I did. Fatigue was starting to settle in, and every shift, every desperate dash, cost me a bit more energy.

  Eventually, an opening was made, a clear path to where I was going from where Alex was. My angelic classmate raced towards me; I countered with another barrage of acidic spittle. Alex gave one beat of her wings and sent the acid flying in the opposite direction. I tried to halt my movement and did, stopping just shy of where Alex ran through. She sent out a quick jab into my face as she passed by, knocking me back into a barrier. The grips of the arms I had made for myself were strong, but the arms themselves were brittle, a few bones fracturing slightly from the force.

  I let go of the grips as a ripple passed through, shifting my body around again to get ready for the next attack. Alexandra jumped in again with reckless abandon. I met the charge, jumping as well, but just to the side, towards her left wing. I grabbed the wing in both arms, sunk a clawed foot into the boxy obstacle beside us as we fell, and used my leverage to throw the girl by her wing.

  “All that strength, but you still weigh as much as any teenage girl. Of course, my powers work a bit differently than yours, I said as I jumped down. A ripple passed through and changed me once more, enhancing my biceps and shoulders while putting most of my weight into my ‘feet,’ now fused together and tapered into a small point. I landed heavily on Alex’s back, near where the joint of her wing was, as I yanked on it, my grip still tight on the appendage.

  “Ahh!” Alex cried out in pain as her wing was pulled painfully. Even her prodigious strength didn’t seem to be enough to break my grip from a prone position, but it was too much for me to break the limb either. She thrashed around on the ground for a few moments, her actions shaking the ground, and I saw one kid nearly fall in from the ledge above as the class peered down (there were no more cheers now, everyone too focused on the brutal fight at hand).

  The thrashing not helping, Alex managed to stand up, pushing off against the ground in a more directed effort. That left me hanging horizontally as I maintained my grip on the wing. My foot point wasn’t gripping as well, but I didn’t bother trying to fix it, just maintaining the position long enough to jump away as Alex raced backwards and slammed herself into a wall in an attempt to smoosh me.

  Another obstacle wrecked beyond its ability to self-repair, Alex’s wing sticking out of it. As the girl stepped clear of the wreckage, pulling her wing out through it with a painful wince, I saw that it was still relatively undamaged. She might have ‘ruffled a few feathers’ literally in this case, but the wing wasn’t broken or bent awkwardly, disjointed at most, if that.

  Alex surprised me again, turning her back on me. Before I could take advantage of that amateur move, though, Alex had grabbed the wrecked obstacle, easily ripping it out of the ground and jumping up. Soaring above the arena, she turned midair to face me, looking down. The refrigerator-sized, torn-up metal block, cocked in her hand like a baseball, would have been almost comical were it not for the pain that I knew was incoming.

  The metal block whipped through the air at me, and I nearly jumped over it, but I unfortunately predicted a better aim than Alex actually had. I jumped over and away from the scrap metal, only for it to bounce on the point of contact, just a few feet shy of where I had been, bouncing as it hit the ground to nail me midair and send me tumbling back. It hurt a bit, but with the pain dulled, the impact and broken teeth weren’t too bad, not like the disorientation was.

  Flipping the metal off of me, I found myself at the edge of the arena again, Alex rushing in for the kill. Or knockout, in this case. Hopefully. Throwing myself to the side in desperation, I dodged the wild punch, which ended up burying Alex’s fist deep into the wall, cracks running up through it. There, this is my chance.

  Whirling around, I put everything I could, almost all my mass, into one last attack against the stuck girl. A huge ripple passed through me, engorging my left arm into a giant mass of muscle, larger than the rest of me by half. It resembled less of an arm and more a giant drill of flesh and bone, a tip of collagen at the end pistoning towards Alex. The winged girl whipped away, her ‘stuck’ arm tearing out of the wall like paper, so the shot struck Alex in the face instead of her shoulder.

  My classmate flew across the floor, her head whipping back as she screamed out in pain. It wasn’t a good sign, and I winced but at the same time relaxed as I heard the screams - screaming meant Alex was fine. Fine enough, at least. Nursegirl will fix her up.

  Alex’s wings flared out, arresting her movement and letting her rise, spitting out blood and a small white thing as she did so. Ah, the tip of a tooth, I noted as my gaze trailed up to Alex’s eyes, full of real pain and primal fury. My mind flashed back to what she had said about pain, and I began to realize my mistake.

  There was barely any time to register the movement before Alex was in front of me, one hand clasping my oversized arm, the other punching at me in a rage. Hard-earned instincts let me duck my head to the side and raise my other, withered arm to block before Alex’s punch landed, causing the punch to ‘merely’ shatter my right arm and other bones on that side and blast me across the room. Of course, Alex’s iron grip on my left arm ensured that most of me didn’t make that trip, the limb tearing off at the shoulder.

  Blood arced all over from my limbs; my head was ringing as it crashed into something - a wall or an obstacle, I didn’t know - and a need to survive filled me suddenly. I’m going to die. If I don’t switch right now, Alex will kill me, I need a new b- Gunther dropped down in between us, his landing silent but his presence instantly clarifying things. If anything, my guard went up with his entrance, and with it, my composure returned as I assessed the situation more clearly.

  A small part of my mind found it deliciously ironic that the man to cause me to calm down from blowing my cover was probably the one who had tried to kill me the most and would have been the first one out for my blood had he stepped in a second later. No one else could have caused me to rethink this, only him, and only because what I had been about to do never worked on Gunther, so I instinctively looked for a different plan.

  “This fight is over,” he announced coldly, cane raised and pointed at Alex, who had stopped herself but still looked a bit confused before she glanced over at the arm she was holding and dropped it in shock. “This reckless, violent behavior nearly got-”

  Well, that won’t do, I thought to myself as I got up, achingly, fixing the worst of my wounds but not bothering to spend the energy to completely heal myself, just closing the hole in my left shoulder and making sure my organs were alright. “I totally agree, Teach,” I said breezily as I walked up to them. “I’m out of the fight; that last punch really knocked the breath out of me. Thanks for calling it for me.” I placed my good hand on his shoulder, and the glare he gave me reminded me that I wasn’t quite out of mortal danger yet (though if I was asked and forced to answer honestly, I’d say it was worth it to leave a bloody mess on his expensive suit).

  “Your behavior was reckless too, Miss Einburgh. And dangerous; the blows you sent at Miss Herron could have easily been fatal to most students. I should have both of you expelled for your recklessness.”

  “Whoa, hold up there. It really wasn’t as bad as it looked.” He finally turned to face me properly.

  “‘Not as bad?’ Look around at the devastation you’ve wrought. Your arm is a bloody mess on the ground, and the two of you look like you’ve gone through absolute carnage.” He’s agitated. His hands are twitching slightly, caught off guard with what to say, just making broad statements of fact. He didn’t expect the most beaten-up girl to call him out, if he expected ‘his’ authority to be called out at all here. The students and teachers above were whispering and chatting excitedly about the fight. Alex noticed the rips to her uniform, the blood and acid soaking her, and quickly folded her wings down over her legs and body.

  Holding back an inner smirk, I continued, adopting a slightly confused but respectful tone. “It looks bad, sure, but I can regenerate, and I only amped up the power of my blows slowly as the fight went on, testing her defenses.” That part was even mostly true, and from the way Gunther gritted his teeth, he knew he couldn’t prove otherwise. “The fact that we’re stronger than most should be a good sign. I apologize for the slight damage done to your gym, but I think that just means the arena served its purpose. After all, you did say we’d push it past its breaking point.” I’m feeling good about this. Gunther wields his authority like a cudgel, always has, trying to browbeat everyone into following his line. But if I can introduce a bit of doubt, make the others question things too, and then-

  My body, strong as it was, had been pushed too far and betrayed me, swaying to the side slightly. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for a dam to break, Alex bursting out and saying, “I’m so sorry! I got way too excited, and then I went too hard, and I didn’t control enough, and-” Dammit! I had him where I wanted him! I’ve gotta do damage control.

  “It’s fine really, I asked you to go hard-” My attempts to salvage the situation were cut short.

  “Enough,” Gunther said, calmly raising a hand to silence the both of us. His lips were still set into a tight line, but there was a smile in his eyes now. It was not a pleasant smile. “Miss Herron, you obviously went the farthest here, going well beyond the bounds of what was acceptable for this tournament. You will be removed from this tournament, and I will think on if you need further punishment, though I find myself inclined to be merciful as this is your first day. I can forgive your poor control and emotional outbursts this time.”

  Trembling with rage, I barely held back from hauling off and punching Gunther as I looked at Alex, who had been so happy and energetic before, now with her head down and looking so... small, before him. Only my exhausted, weakened body held me back. Well, that and the knowledge that even at full strength I couldn’t have hurt him forced me to stay my hand. The worst part is he can set himself looking like he’s reasonable and ‘giving her a chance.’.

  Alex nodded meekly and scurried away to the changing room as Gunther spoke up to the entire class. “Alexandra Herron is disqualified; Camila Einsburgh will be moving onto the next round against Trevor Hawthorn in Arena 2.” He walked to the stairs to head back, passing me by and saying in a low tone as he passed “You implied your wounds at Miss Herron’s hands were not that great, so I advise you hurry over there and don’t waste our time. I’d hate to doubt you.” The implicit threat hung in his words as I stood there a moment before I forced my body to move, back up the stairs and to my next match.